School for Public Health Research @ LSHTM (SPHR@L)
SPHR@L Seminar Series: 2016-2017
A talk by DrRichard Crisp
Sheffield Hallam University
Thursday, 29th September2016, 12.45-2.00pm
LSHTM, Room G9 (Jenny Roberts Room) 15-17 Tavistock Place,London WC1H 9SH
Do spatially targeted initiatives improve health and well-being?
Abstract
The shift towards holistic area-based interventions (ABIs) in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the early 1990s marked a twenty-year period in which improving health and well-being became an explicit goal of large-scale area-based regeneration. However, the claim that ABIs have 'failed' led to a distinct change in urban policy after 2010 as the last two governments focussed instead on developing more organic forms of ‘community-led' regeneration. Against this policy context, the paper will assess the evidence on the impact of both types of approach - top-down ABIs and bottom up community initiatives - and reflect on the implications of this shift. Drawing on a mix of studies in which the author has been involved and wider evidence, it argues that top-down ABIs were far from failures with some significant, positive outcomes around health and wellbeing. These tended to arise from physical interventions around housing and the physical environment, though, rather than initiatives explicitly seeking to address health inequalities. Meanwhile, available evidence suggests community-led, neighbourhood-level activities (e.g. community-led housing) can deliver positive individual outcomes around health and well-being, but are unlikely to achieve the scale needed to effect area-wide change. This raises concerns about expectations that community-led forms of activity can fill the vacuum at a neighbourhood level in a 'post-regeneration' policy environment.